Ezra Klein argues that Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, will determine if many of Obama's plans succeed or fail:
For that reason, the leadership of the Finance Committee has traditionally produced legislative giants. Russell Long. Bob Dole. Bob Packwood. Lloyd Bentsen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. These men were darlings of the Sunday talk shows. They rivaled the power of the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and they were tapped to fill presidential tickets. Max Baucus, however, is not a giant. He is a polite man with sensible silver glasses and a gentle handshake. He is roundabout in conversation, and punctuates his points by raising his eyebrows and smiling slightly, as if pleading with you to agree with him. He has served five terms as a senator from Montana, a state with one of the smallest populations in the union. Insofar as he has any national profile at all, it's as a Democratic apostate. He partnered with Republican Chuck Grassley to craft President George W. Bush's first tax cut and angered the Democratic leadership by refusing to consult them before the bill's markup. He further infuriated his party by helping Republicans pass the Medicare prescription-drug bill even after they had locked the Democratic leadership out of conference committee. He voted for the 2005 bankruptcy bill. For his sins, The Nation has branded him "K Street's Favorite Democrat." This magazine termed him "Bad Max." The New Republic editorialized that he should be stripped of his chairmanship.
And Matt Yglesias explains how to break the neocon lock on Washington:
This creates an important opportunity for Obama to co-opt the pragmatic faction of the Republican coalition into his own. Endorsements by Powell and former Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, combined with Sen. Chuck Hagel's refusal to endorse and the under-noticed absence of Sen. Richard Lugar as a McCain surrogate in Indiana even as the state achieved "swing" status, hint at what might come down the road. And, clearly, talk, widespread in Washington, of keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense is motivated by similar sentiments. The sense is that Gates, co-author of a 2004 task-force report calling for engagement with Iran, knows that a bigger break with neoconservatism than what we've seen thus far is necessary.
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—The Editors
